But for the more visually talented people out there, you also have the 24-hour
comic, in which you draw a 24 page comic book in 24 hours. I've read a
few and inevitably, the drawings get more and more loose and the story
line (as much as there is one) gets less and less coherent. It might be
interesting to draw one backwards—that is, start with the last page and
work your way forward. That way, the drawings get tighter and the story
gets more coherent as you read along.

In discussion it came out that a VP is probably protecting his job and using Kelly as a
sacraficial goat to appease the CEO who is under investigation by the SEC so it might not be a
bad thing that Kelly is no longer there. Oh, but what a tangled
web corporate politics and accounting weave.

I had actually signed up in the few remaining minutes of October but didn't
get around to actually starting my novel until today. Let's see,
Friday I spent helping Kelly coping with
his job situation, Saturday was spent at a BBQ with some friends (where I met Dennis
Willson, responsible for running dnsrbl.com, a spam-blocking site) and Sunday I spent contemplating the happiness of Eric. So I'm a few
days behind.

And what I have I'm not happy with at all. Not one bit.

I'm contemplating starting over tomarrow.

But otherwise, I have about 3,000 words of utter drek to contend with.

I just got word from Mark that I've been mentioned
in O'Reilly'sHTTP: The
Definitive Guide on page 230. It's in reference to a draft proposal I
had to extend the robots exclustion
protocol (and as I see, I
really need to update the links on that page—they're all out
of date which I had to go back and fix the links since link-rot had
set in) I wrote back in 1996. I had no idea I made an O'Reilly book. And
Mark is pissed off that I made it first (well,
“pissed off” is not quite the right word—maybe “envious” is more like
it).

I get maybe one email about it every other year or so, namely asking me if I
know of any robots that implement my proposed extentions and to my knowledge
I know of none that do.

But then, Tupac Shakur's Better Dayz, released later this month, is
no ordinary album. It is the 16th Tupac release since the
gangsta rapper's murder in September 1996.

Sixteen albums in six years would be a prodigious feat for an artist
who was still breathing, particularly when you bear in mind that
many of them are double CD
sets. For a dead artist who released only four albums during his
lifetime, it smacks of macabre exploitation, not to mention an
ever-dipping quality control.

Tupac is certainly in the running to be the L. Ron Hubbard of
the hip-hop set. Sixteen albums? That's good.

So let's see—to make it in the music industry, record lots of music. It
doesn't have to be good, just there. Release an album or two and lead a
very exciting or controversial life (preferably both) then fake your own
death. Cut the proceeds 50/50 with the record industry and live the rest of
your life in style.

Spring and I were
invited to “War at the Shore III: Battle Operating System—Windows .Net
Server vs. Linux” presented by the Gold Coast .Net Users Group. In one corner
was Ivar Hyngstrom, Senior Technology Specialist II, Systems Architecture,
Messaging and Storage for Microsoft, representing the (obvious)
Microsoft .Net server side. In the other corner was
Von Walter, Senior Consultant, IBM Global Services from Orlando representing the Linux side.
The fight theme was quite strong in the debate; they even had a woman (Gina)
walking about the conference room with a placard numbering the rounds.

Round 1—General capabilities

IBM won the coin toss and declined to go first. In the first of two major
embarassing moments, Microsoft had hit the wrong button the their laptop and
we had to wait several minutes for him to recover. My impression of the
first round is that Microsoft is slowly re-inventing Unix within their
operating system. .Net server is a bit more scriptable than previous
versions of Microsoft Windows and now includes remote administration! Woo
hoo! (Of course, that could be due to Microsoft wanting to put Citrix out of business)

Also learned a new acronym: SAN: System Area Network.

And how is that different from Local Area Network?

I was impressed that Microsoft has added a versioning file system to .Net
server. The presenter deleted his Power Point presentation and was able to
restore from two previous versions. Granted, this isn't new: DEC had this in VMS
years ago, so no real innovation there (“but of course
Microsoft invented ‘Shadow Copies’”).

IBM? I'm sorry, I fell asleep during his presentation.

It was that bad.

Round 2—Security

IBM goes first. Highlight of IBM's presentation: a distinction between
hackers and crackers. Low point: mentioning the r-commands (like
rsh, rcp, rlogin etc.). No one in their bloody
minds uses those commands anymore. I never used them when I first
started using UNIX back in 1990! Sheesh!

Spring mentioned that Microsoft was using buzz words during their
presentations, while IBM was just saying how it worked.

But Microsoft was more polished in its presentation, even if it was empty of
real content.

Highlight of Microsoft's presentation: “Relative Attack Surfaces” said
with a straight face. Amazing.

He also said that .Net server was secure by

Design

Default

Deployment

Again, with a straight face.

Amazing.

At the end of this round I got to ask a question: What's the time between
an exploit that is found and the time the vendor (Microsoft, any particular
Linux distribution) will get a patch out? I knew the answer (Microsoft, if
they even acknowledge the exploit, will have a patch out maybe a
week or two. Linux: hours). I was quite disappointed in the answers.
Microsoft hemmed and hawed and never did give a definite answer. IBM didn't
quite know how to answer the question and gave a weak answer, more of a
guess, of a week turn around time for RedHat.

Round 3—Scalability and Failover

Microsoft goes first. He tried to create a cluster, but the software
crashed on him. He seemed to be running .Net server under VMWare but I'm not sure
if it was .Net server that crashed, VMWare that crashed, or he just closed
the wrong window. In any case, the presentation failed over to IBM.

This was one of the better rounds for IBM. Or I was less familiar with the
material. He mentioned IBM's Blue Gene
which is a computer with 65,536 CPUs and some 16 terabytes of RAM (which is 16×240 or
17,592,186,044,416 bytes—a typical book takes up about a megabyte, or
1,048,576 bytes, this thing could hold 16,777,216 books in memory!). And he
also mentioned Google,
which is now up to 15,000 machines, have indexed some 3 billion pages and
handles around 150,000,000 search queries (a day? A month? my notes are a
bit illegible at this point).

Round 4—System Administration

Dull dull dull dull dull. IBM just read off the slides and Microsoft was
still trying to get the clustering to work from the previous round.

Round 5—Is there a point?

Microsoft finally finished setting up the cluster software (from
Round 3) only to shut down the wrong server. I must have fallen asleep at
this point since I have no notes at all of what IBM talked about.

End of this debacle

This was thankfully the last round of a rather pointless debate—the
Microsoft guy kept claiming to be too technical to answer any questions
about pricing or licensing or anything (although he did say he didn't like
subscription model of RedHat tech support—this from Microsoft?
Who is trying to force a subscription model on software?) and
apparently the IBM guy was here in an “unofficial” capacity and did not
know Linux all that well (he lost the TCO argument to Microsoft! How sad is that?).

[Notes taken from Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A
Thousand Faces. The text is quoted directly from his book.
Typographical errors are most likely mine.]

Departure

the call to adventure

A blunder—apparently the merest chance—reveals an unsuspected
world, and the individual is drawn into a relationship with forces
that are not rightly understood.

refusal of the call

Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular
tales, we encounter the dull case fo the call unanswered; for it is
always possible to turn the ear to other interests. Refusal of the
summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in
boredom, hard work, or “culture,” the subject loses the power of
significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved.

supernatural aid

For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the
hero-journey is with a protective fiture (often a little old crone
or old man) who provides the adventurer with amulets against the
dragon forces he is about to pass.

What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of
destiny. The fantasy is a reassurance—a promise that the peace of
Paradise, which was known first within the mother womb, is not to be
lost …

Not infrequenty, the supernatural helper is masculine in form. In
fairy lore it may be some little fellow of the wood, some wizard,
hermit, shepherd, or smith, who appears, to supply the amulets and
advice that the hero will require.

the crossing of the first threshold

With the personification of his destiny to guide and aid him, the
hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the “threshold
guardian” at the entrance to the zone of magnified power. Such
custodians bound the world in the four directions—also up and
down—standing for the limits of the hero's present sphere, or life
horizon.

the belly of the whale

The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into
a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the
belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or consiliating
the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown, and would
appear to have died.

Initiation

The road of trials

Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream
landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survice
a succession of trials. … The hero is covertly aided by the
advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom
he met before his entrance into the region. Or it may be that he
here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power
everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage.

And so it happens that if anyone—in whatever society—undertakes
for himself the perilous journey into the darkness by descending,
either intentionally or unintentionally, into the crooked lanes of
his own spiritual labyrinth, he soon fineds himself in a landscape
of symbolical figures (any one of which may swallow him) … In the
vocabulary of the mystics, this is the second stage of the Way, that
of the “purification of the self,” which the senses are “cleansed
and humbled,” and the energies and interests “concentrated upon
transcendental things”; or in a vocabulary of more modern turn:
this is the process of dissolving, transcending, or transmuting the
infantile images of our personal past.

The ordeal is the deepening of the problem of the first threshold
and the question is still in balance: Can the ego put itself to
death?

the meeting with the goddess

The ultimate adventure, when all the barriers and orgres have been
overcome, is commonly represented as a mystical marriage of the
triumphant hero-soul with the Queen Goddess of the World. This is
the crisis at the nadir, the zenith, or at the uttermost edge of the
earth, at the central point of the cosmos, in the tabernacle of the
temple, or within the darkness of the deepest chamber of the heart.

Only geniuses capable of the highest realization can support the
full revelation of the sublimity of this goddess. For lesser men
she reduces her effulgence and permits herself to appear in forms
concordant with their undeveloped powers. Fully to behold her would
be a terrible accident for any person not spiritually prepared.

woman as the temptress

The mystical marriage with the queen goddess of the world represents
the hero's total mastery of life; for the woman is life, the hero
its knower and master. … With that he knows that he and the father
are one: he is in the father's place.

… Where this Oedipus-Hamlet revulsion remains to beset the soul,
there the world, the body, the woman above all, become the symbols
no longer of victory but of defeat.

atonement with the father

For the ogre aspect of the father is a reflex of the victim's own
ego—derived from the sensational nursery scene that has been left
behind, but projected before; and the fixating idolatry of that
pedagogical nothing is itself the fault that keeps one steeped in a
sense of sin, sealing the potentially adult spirit from a better
balanced, more realistic view of the father, and therewith of the
world. Atonement (at-one-ment) consists in no more than the
abandonment of that self-generated double monster—the dragon
thought to be God (superego) and the dragon thought to be Sin
(repressed id). But this requres an abandonment of the attachment
of ego itself, and that is what is difficult.

For the son who has grown really to know the father, the agonies of
the ordeal are readily borne; the world is no longer a vale of tears
but a bliss-yielding, perpetual manifestation of the Presence.

apotheosis

And so it must be known that, though this ignorant, limited,
self-defineding, suffering body may reguard itself as threatened by
some other—the enemy—that one too is the God. The ogre breaks
us, but the hero, the fit candidate, undergoes the initiation “like
a man”; and behold, it was the father: we in Him and He in us. The
dear, protecting mother of our body could not defind us from the
Great Father Serpent; the mortal, tangible body that she gave us was
delivered into his frightening power. But death was not the end.
New life, new birth, new knowledge of existence was given us. That
father was himself the womb, the mother, of a second birth.

This is the meaning of the image of the bisexual god. He is the
mystery of the theme of initiation. We are taken from the mother,
chewed into fragments and assimilated to the world-annihilating body
of the ogre for whom all the precious forms and beings are only the
courses of a feast; but then, miraculously reborn, we are more than
we were.

the ultimate boon

The boon bestowed on the worshiper is always scaled to his stature
and to the nature of his dominant desire: the boon is simply a
symbol of the life energy stepped down to the requirements of a
certain specific case. The irony, of course, lies in the fact that,
whereas the hero who has won the favor of the god may beg for the
boon of perfect illunination, what he generally seeks are longer
years to live, weapons with which to slay his neighbor, or the
health of his child.

Return

refusal of the return

When the hero-quest has been accomplished, through penetration to
the source, or through the grace of some male or female, human or
animal, personification, the adventurer still must return with this
life-transmuting trophy. The full round, the norm of the monomyth,
requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the
runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess, back
into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the
renewing of the community, the nation, the planet, or the then
thousand worlds.

But the responsiblity has been frequently refused. Even the Buddha,
after his triumph, doubted whether the message of realization could
be communicated, and saints are reported to have passed away while
in the supernal ecstasy. Numerous indeed are the heros fabled to
have taken up residence forever in the blessed isle of the unaging
Goddess of Immortal Being.

the magic flight

If the hero in his triumph wins the blessing of the goddess or god
and is then explicitly commissioned to return to the world with some
elixir for the restoration of society, the final stage of his
adventure is supported by all the powers of his supernatural patron.
On the other hand, if the trophy has been attained against the
opposition of its guardian, or if the hero's wish to return to the
world has been resented by the gods or demons, then the last stage
of the mythological round becomes a lively, often comical, pursuit.
This flight may be complicated by marvels of magical obstruction and
evasion.

A popular variety of the magic flight is that in which objects are
left behind to speak for the fugitive and thus delay persuit. …

Another well-known variety of the magic flight is one in which a
number of delaying obstacles are tossed behind by the wildly fleeing
hero. …

resucue from without

The hero may have to be brought back from his supernatual adventure
by assistance from without. That is to say, the world may have to
come and get him. For the bliss of the deep abode is not lightly
abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wakened state.
“Who having cast off the world," we read, "would desire to return
again? He would be only there.” And yet, in so far as one
is alive, life will call. Society is jealous of those who remain
away from it, and will come knocking at the door.

the crossing of the return threshold

The two worlds, the divine and the human, can be pictured only as
distinct from each other—different as life and death, as day and
night. The hero adventures out of the land we know into darkness;
there is accomplishes his adventure, or again is simply lost to us,
imprisoned, or in danger; and his return is described as a coming
back out of that yonder zone. Nevertheless—and here is a great
key to the understanding of myth and symbol—the two kingdoms are
actually one. The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimention of the
world we know. And the exploration of that dimention, either
willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the
hero. …

… The boon brought from the transcendent deep becomes quickly
rationalized into nonentity, and the need becomes great for another
hero to refresh the world.

Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative
threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as
real, after an experience of the sould-satisfying vision of
fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy
obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? … The easy thing
is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into
the heavenly rock-dwelling, close the door, and make it fast.

master of the two worlds

Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the
perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal deep
and back—not contaminating the principles fo the one with those of
the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the
other—is the talent of the master. …

The meaning is very clear; it is the meaning of all religious
practice. The individual, through prolonged psychological
disciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal
limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes and fears, no longer resists the
self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization
of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment.
His personal ambitions being totally dissolved, he no longer tries
to live but willingly relaxes to whatever may come to pass in him;
he becomes, that is to say, an anonymity. The Law lives in him with
his unreserved consent.

freedom to live

The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become,
because he is.

[Notes taken from Joseph Campbell's The Hero With
A Thousand Faces. The text is quoted directly from his book.
Typographical errors are most likely mine.]

The mythological hero, setting forth from his commonday hut or castle, is
lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of
adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage.
The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom
of the dark (brother-battle, dragon-battle; offering, charm), or be slain by
the opponent and descend in death (dismemberment, crucifixion). Beyond the
threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet
strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some
of which give magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the
mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The
triumph may be represented as the hero's sexual union with the
goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition by the
father-creator (father atonement), his own divinization (apotheosis), or
again—if the powers have remained unfriendly to him—his theft of the
boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft); intrinsically it is an
expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination,
transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of the return. If the
powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection
(emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle
flight). At the return threshold the transcendental powers must remain
behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread (return,
resurection). The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir).

There is nothing quite like having thirty days to write fifty thousand words
and you have no idea what to write. So you write. And write. And write
some more. And end up with a mess that will either be really terrible or a masterpiece.

It's early 1961. Eisenhowser gave his farewell speech that
warned about the millitary-industrial complex and Kennedy, after the
closest Presidential race in U. S. History, is turning the White
House into Camelot. The horrors of the Cold War have yet to come.
Vietnam is still back page news in the papers, McCarthyism is, if
not completely dead, mostly over. The mood of the nation is
optimistic.

And into this idyll place a novel is given to some random
20something to read. It's not a novel in the conventional sense but
more of a collection of vignettes about the future. Nothing
exciting, nothing overly grand. Just normal life as it would appear
to someone in the future. Some fourty years into the future.

About our now.

Notes from my poor attempt at a novel, 20 Minutes Into The Future

My intent was to write a series of loosely coupled stories taking place in
the near indeterminate future, some fourty, maybe fifty years down the road.
Just take current trends as I see them, and extend them down; maybe toss in
a few outrageous things that can't possibly happen (who could
foresee the fall of Communism or terrorists piloting a plane (a
commercial plane!) into the Pentagon? Or two of the tallest
buildings in the U. S.?) and let it stand at that.

Only I'm getting rather depessed the more I contemplate the near future.
And not just over Pax
Americana either. The abolishment of anonymous money (unless of course, you are already
filthy rich in which case there are plenty of tax havens for you to shuffle your funds towards), the
abolishment of ownership (and not by a Communistic government fiat but by
the relentless shift of ownership from personal to corporations and
foundations), creation of corporate fiefdoms (which are worse
than the fiefdoms of Europe—at least there you gave your fielty to your
local barron and he protected you—now you still have to give your fielty
to your local corporate masters but they don't have to protect you, or even
keep you employed), errosion of privacy (data mining of cross indexed
corporate and government databases, ubiquitous cameras watching our every
move, and every citizen being fingerprinted and chipped from childhood) and excuse me whilst I slit my wrists
right now …

For Sale!

Investment Homes for Sale—4 days use! Buy now while they last!
Going fast, so hurry!

Two days overnight
use only. Use during Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas extra. No
Trick-or-Treating allowed during Halloweeen. Dinner parties of more
than 20 require permission of the Board. Taxes include city, county
and school district. Monthly cleaning required.

Excerpt from my poor attempt at a novel, 20 Minutes Into The Future

I thought it best to rethink my strategy, and it's then when I turned to
The Hero Of A Thousand Faces. Joseph Campbell did extensive research
into the myths from around the world and noticed certain themes coming up
time and time again. These he outlined and explained in his book, The
Hero Of A Thousand Faces, notes of which I made into entries (mostly for
myself but hey, someone else could find a use for them). So if George
Lucas can apply the monomyth to a crappy script (“You can type this
XXXX, George, but you can't say it.” –Harrison
Ford), bad acting (Need I mention a whiny Mark Hamill? Or Carrie Fisher's
faux British accent through half the film?) and a derivative plot (taken
from Kurosawa's Hidden
Fortress, right down to the two peasents rendered as A2-D2 and C-3P0)
and have one of the top grossing films ever, then it couldn't hurt
me, right?

But I have a problem with the Hero's
Arc. Not that I don't think it's valid
(it is) but more for what it represents—that the Hero is extraordinary in
some sense; that he's of divine birth (or noble birth, but really, there is
no difference as the early kings and emperors of our history were thought to
be of divine birth anyway) and has a higher destiny; a calling to greatness.
Joe Serf need not apply. And that doesn't sit well with me. Even Luke
Skywalker turned out to be the spawn of a knight and a queen …

The other problem I'm having is that I've yet to write fiction. Okay, sure,
I have a few comedy
sketches I did (Monty Python phase)
and my humor columnstowards
the end might be considered mostly fictional but they did derive from
actual events (however exaggerated they became—perhaps this was my Hunter S. Thompson phase,
unbeknownst to me) and there was the one college paper on Gothic Cathedrals
was largly fabricated on the spot (I was in my Dave
Barry phase at that point) but overall, most of my writing has been
non-fictional in nature. This fictional stuff is quite different for me, so
there's difficulty there.

The second document, the gigantic Behavioral Science Teacher
Education Project, outlined teaching reforms to be forced on the
country after 1967. If you ever want to hunt this thing down, it
bears the U.S. Office of Education Contract Number
OEC-0-9-320424-4042 (B10). The document sets out clearly the
intentions of its creators—nothing less than “impersonal
manipulation” through schooling of a future America in which “few
will be able to maintain control over their opinions,” an America
in which “each individual receives at birth a multi-purpose
identification number” which enables employers and other
controllers to keep track of underlings and to expose them to direct
or subliminal influence when necessary. Readers learned that
“chemical experimentation” on minors would be normal procedure in
this post-1967 world, a pointed foreshadowing of the massive Ritalin
interventions which now accompany the practice of forced schooling.

I came across this link not as research for my poor attempt at a novel, but because I have an
interest in just how bad our educational system is, but I didn't realize
just blatently manipulative it is. And it's just one more depressing data
point to add to the every growing list of depressing trends in society.

[from orders given on Mr. Gatto's first day
of teaching:]Good morning, Mr. Gatto. You have typing. Here is your program.
Remember, THEY MUST NOT TYPE! Under no circumstances are they
allowed to type. I will come around unannounced to see that you
comply. DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING THEY TELL YOU about an exception.
THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS.

Not a letter, not a numeral, not a punctuation mark from those
keys or you will never be hired here again. Go now.

When I asked what I should do instead with the class of
seventy-five, he replied, “Fall back on your resources. Remember,
you have no typing license!”

I wish I could say this was satire; a damning critique of the U. S.
educational system and unions or guilds but no, this isn't satire, it's real
life. It's the New York City school system (in Harlem) circa 1961.

I'm so glad I'm out of that system. But I feel for Spring's children …

It's 1997. You call up the 800 number to order another computer, and
after you've chosen between the Alpha-III and the Octium chip and
the 15 and 30 gigabyte hard drive, the salesperson tells you that
the machine comes with the “Basic Package” of Windows NT, Word,
Excel, Access, Money, and Multimedia Producer, and asks if you'd
like to turn on any additional software at the time. You request
Project, Designer, and Visual C++, and they're enabled also. In any
case, you're told, “it's all on the CD-ROM, so you don't have to
decide right now”.

Now let's look into the other end of the binoculars; from Bill
Gates' chair rather than his customers'. Today, there more than 125
million MS-DOS personal computers installed. Given the rapid
adoption of Windows and sustained high sales rate of new machines
driven by price performance improvements in new chips, I believe it
conservative to expect that 100 million Windows NT machines will be
installed 4 years from today, most equipped with CD-ROM, multimedia
accessories, and contemporary peripherals; some upgraded from
current high-end MS-DOS machines, but most new machines of the
Pentium/Alpha generation and their successors. Further, let us
assume that Microsoft is unsuccessful in selling any software other
than the Basic set (I'm sure you'll concede, based on Microsoft's
new product success rate, this assumption is conservative). Well,
multiply it out. That's 100 million machines times US$10 per month
times 12 months per year, and the answer is: US$12
Billion-with-a-B-like-Bill per year of automatic recurring
revenue for which the marketing costs are essentially nil and
distribution margin is nonexistent since fulfillment is direct.

Microsoft in the
past year or so has been pushing for software subscription, much like we do
now with cable TV (as pointed out in
the article). After all, programs are programs.

Also mentioned in the article is Bill Gates wanting to shift to software
subscription in 1992!

And to think that there actually does exist an American company
that can think more than two quarters out.

While consumer reaction to Microsoft's attempts to shift to a subscription
base have been negative, Microsoft also realizes that it's not the end user
that pays its bills—it's the corporate accounts that do, and selling a
subscription to corporations is probably an easier sell there. Predictable
billing cycles and an easier amorization schedule will do that. And as the
article states:

I think the answer lies in the observation that most companies who
succeed in building self-sustaining subscription-based businesses
start from a position of effective monopoly of their sector. In the
case of AT&T, it was a combination of technology,
patents, and government grants which conferred the monopoly.
IBM
built its first monopoly in tabulating equipment on the patent of
the Hollerith card, then clawed its way to an effective monopoly in
computers by out marketing and out-customer-servicing Remington
Rand, Burroughs, and others. Xerox derived its monopoly from the
patent on xerography.

The article itself is dated from 1993 (the last update reported by the
webserver is 1998, but that may be when the page was uploaded to the
server) which may have been around the time the first real mumblings of
Microsoft being a “monopoly” at the DOJ were being heard but I think that even back then in
1993 it was a forgone conclusion that Micosoft was indeed a monopoly, and
thus had the power to switch to a subscription base for its software
offerings.

Not that Microsoft has actually done that. Yet.

Okay, excluding the Microsoft Developer Network, it hasn't done that.

Yet.

And if Bill Gates was thinking of this in 1992 I have to wonder
what he's got in store for 2012 … then again, the world is expected to end
in 2012 … hmmmmmm …

Spring and I are
off to the International
Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Exhibition in Orlando.
Spring found a stuff animal manufacturer for a project of hers and instead
of flying up to New England to meet them, found out they were going to this
show instead, where there might be other manufacturers and it was
certainly cheaper than flying (not to mention less hassle).

But first, we needed to print some forms before going up there, but due to
the lack of printers here in the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere and some
poor planning on my part, we ended up at Kinko's at about 10:00 in the morning
(ick). I had put the document we needed printing on the webserver here at
the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere (floppies? What are those?).
Download, print, no problem.

The setup at this particular Kinko's
was quite nice—you slip your credit card into the reader next to the
computer and you are automatically logged in. When you log out, you can
then go to another machine, slide your credit card into that and
get a receipt; never have to even bother the staff if you don't want to (of
course, we couldn't find the receipt machine and had to ask—it
was located around the corner from the computers partially hidden by a stand
of merchandise). And before you print, the computer will display the
charges per page of output and allow you to cancel.

Quite nice.

What wasn't so nice was downloading the document we needed.

Because our cable provider filters (relative to the Facility in the Middle
of Nowhere) incoming web requests, I'm running the webserver on a
non-standard port; I just have to remember to include the port number in the
URL. No big deal.

Execept that Kinko's (or the office we were at) doesn't allow outgoing
web requests except on the standard HTTP port. Okay, I can still FTP the file down.

Except there is no FTP
client installed on the machine. I can't get to the command line prompt on
the machine (of course it's a Windows box) nor is there a way to
run a command line program from the “Start” button. While I have an
FTP server running on the
firewall at the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere, I don't allow
anonymous FTP so I can't
use the web browser. And that's assuming Kinko's even allowsFTP.

Okay, don't panic.

I need to get the document to a “real” webserver. To do that, I need to
log into the firewall and transfer the document. To do that, I need puTTY,
a fairly small Windows program that allows one to log into a Unix system.
Nice thing about this program is that you don't need to install it—you can
just download and run it. And that I was able to do. I was even
able to log into my firewall, transfer the file to my “real” webserver, download the document
and then print.

The convention itself wasn't really populated with booths from amusement
parks like Disney or
Six Flags but of
companies that provide materials to amusement parks and
attractions. Lots of engineering firms; what with roller coasters and
animatronics, concessions with their free samples, artisans, costumers,
scenery, just about everything you need to run an amusement park or an
attraction.

Everything interesting and distracting as hell. We had found the booth to
one of the companies we went up there to talk to, and just as Spring started
talking to them I got distracted with an architectural model in a nearby
booth and wandered over there, fascinated with the display. That, in turn,
distracted and disturbed Spring enough that we ended up walking through the
exhibits for nearly two hours, just to get it out of my system.

And it's a shame that pictures were not allowed. There was
something at nearly every booth to take a picture of. The human
statues—two people all in white standing so still that you had to watch
for quite a while to make sure they weren't real statues. The Robocoaster
(I think I have the name right)—a huge articulated robot arm (oh,
20′ high easy) with roller coaster seats where the hand would normally
be. Two people can fit inside and the arm will then gyrate around in time
to music. There was quite a line for that one. The one booth with the huge
laser system, shooting beams of light across the entire exhibit floor. The
Beast—a 150′ long, 40′ high
inflatable
monster you enter
through the mouth and wander inside of (only to be expelled where in most
animals most solid waste is expelled, with a most convincing sound effect).
Animatronic dinosaurs, people, ghosts, zombies and monsters (Spring found
the electric chair animatronic most disturbing).

We eventually ended up talking the companies we went up there to talk to and
both meetings went quite well.

So there I was, lazily driving 80 mph or so on the Florida
Turnpike about a mile north of a service plaza (where I was planning on
stopping) when I heard a siren. I looked up into the rear view mirror and
right there, just inches behind me, were the dreaded
flashing red and blue lights.

XXXX!

I start to pull over and the cop flies past me down the Turnpike.

What the …

While in the service plaza Spring and I spot more emergency
vehicles flying southward down the Turnpike.

Later, as we're passing
Yeehaw
Junction the off ramp is a parking lot; the overpass is yet another
parking lot and just past the toll booths is a sea of flashing lights. Not
entirely sure what happened there, but what ever happened, it was pretty
bad.

I learned a few weeks ago that I was
mentioned in the book on page 230. I made mention of that on the WWW Robots Mailing
List (which I've been on since 1995 or 1996) and the author of the
chapter in question, Brian Totty, replied back to me! We exchanged some
email and he said he would try to get O'Reilly to send me a complimentary
copy.

Which they did.

Woo hoo!

The book itself seems to be well written and does explain some of the more
obscure bits of the HypterText Transport Protocol, which will certainly help
Mark and I on
Mark's webserver.

I was feeling a bit tired after lunch so I debated with myself if I
really wanted to hit the convenience store and get some Coke. I'm not sure if I
won or lost as I ended up going to the convenience store. I was most
surprised to find myself with a 1952 U.S. quarter in the change I received.

As a kid, I had one of those books that list the prices collectors are
willing to pay for coins of certain years and there was a remarkable
difference between the 1964 and 1965 U.S. quarters. The 1965 quarter was
the first year the U.S. mint stopped
using silver to make the quarter; therefore the price differential.

I no longer have the book (which was the price guide for something like 1979
or some such year) so I have no idea how much exactly my 1952 quarter is
worth, but it shouldn't be hard to figure out—a quarter weighs 5.670g
(those are the current quarters, but they can't have changed that
much in weight over time and that's the first figure I found with Google) and the current
price of silver
is $4.445 an ounce, but that's Troy ounces of which there are 12 per pound,
not 16, so you have 38 grams/ounce and not the usual 28 grams/ounce … so
you divide … then multiply … but the quarters back then were 90% silver,
not 100% so you adjust accordingly and you get … 59¢ worth of silver!

The double yellow line down the center of the road has a meaning. The
meaning of the double yellow line is “Thou shalt not pass.” It does not
mean “Thou shalt not pass unless thee is in such a hurry that you cannot
wait for another car to turn.” Nor does it mean “Thou shalt not pass
unless thee is in such a hurry that you cannot wait for another car to turn
and Thou art in a yellow Beetle.”

Jim says the fault lasted 20 milliseconds before breakers tripped.
(The breakers for a wire like this are pretty amazing in their own
right. They use high pressure gas to blow out the arc as the circuit
begins to open. Anything that can cut off this number of megawatts
[230kV at
about 700 amps –Sean] in 20 ms gets my respect.) It blew
carbonized oil about 3000 feet down the pipe to either side of the
fault. (Compute velocity … )

The term “pornography” here is used in the sense of “more detail than you
ever wanted to know” rather than “lewd sexual content” (much like CNN is “news porn” and the
Food Channel is “food
porn”). And I find such engineering feats fascinating, primarily
because such engineering feats have to be done right or you waste
tons of money (it's not to say that engineering mishaps don't
happen—the space shuttle Challenger, Three Mile Island and Bhopal come to mind but
given the extent of our infrastructure those events are probably rare. As
Feynman said, “You
can't fool nature.”). And I can't but help marvel at the inginuity used,
such as using liquid nitrogen to freeze the oil dielectric to form ad-hoc
end caps in the pipe so it could be repaired since the oil used is
very expensive and a large enough reserve of oil could not be found
in time, or using a car battery and a millivoltometer to locate the short.

I found it quite amusing to see kids say things like “I want to be so far
removed from the day to day business that I need a crane to pull my bloated
head out of my ass,” and “to lay awake at night, writing the Great
American novel, that will never get published.”

Okay, so I've gone back and fixed
the entry—it's a “Storage Area Network” and not “System Area
Network.” Somebody (I think it was Mark) told me what it actually
meant, but since there's now a
link to the entry (who also thoughtfully corrected me) I might as well
go back and fix it. I originally did a Google search (I don't remember my exact query)
but what I do remember coming up for “SAN” was “System Area Network.”
It was never defined durring the presentation.

My term of reference involves the award of contracts to
multinational companies.

My office is saddled with the responsibility of contract award,
screening, categorization and prioritization of projects embarked
upon by Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) as well as
feasibility studies for selected projects and supervising the
project consultants involved. A breakdown of the fiscal expenditure
by this office as at the end of last fiscal quarter of 2000
indicates that DPR paid out a whooping sum of US$736M (Seven
Hundred And Thirty Six Million, United States Dollars) to successful
contract beneficiaries. The DPR is now compiling beneficiaries to be paid
for the third Quarter of 2002.

The crux of this letter is that the finance/contract department of
the DPR
deliberately over invoiced the contract value of the various
contracts awarded. In the course of disbursements, this department
has been able to accumulate the sum of US$38.2M (Thirty-eight
Million, two hundred Thousand U.S Dollars) as the over-invoiced sum.
This money is currently in a suspense account of the DPR account with
the Debt Reconciliation Committee (DRC). We now seek to process the
transfer of this fund officially as contract payment to you as a
foreign contractor, who will be fronting for us as the beneficiary
of the fund. In this way we can facilitate these funds into your
nominated account for possible investment abroad. We are not allowed
as a matter of government policy to operate any foreign account to
transfer this fund into. However, for your involvement in assisting
us with this transfer into your nominated account we have evolved a
sharing formula as follows:

20% for you as the foreign partner

75% for I and my colleagues

5% will be set aside to defray all incidental expenses
both Locally and Internationally during the course of this
transaction.

We shall be relying on your advice as regard investment of our share
in any business in your country. Be informed that this business is
genuine and 100% safe considering the high-power government
officials involved. Send your private fax/telephone numbers. Upon
your response we shall provide you with further information on the
procedures. Feel free to send response by Fax: 234-1-7590904 / TEL:
234-1-7763126 expecting your response urgently. All enquiries should
be directed to the undersigned by FAX OR PHONE.

I am shocked, nay, dismayed at the corruption and strife going on
in your part of the world. I've been in contact with Mr. David Tofa, Manager of the Eastern
District Bank for Africa, PLC who wanted to move $26,000,000 (20% cut for
me) out of his country. Things were going along nicely and I flew out to
Brussels for a meeting. I later learned through a contact I had with the
Nigeria Ministry of Information (NMI) that as he attempted to fly out of
Porto-Novo, Benin (to avoid scrutiny of the Nigerian military) he was caught
in a rebel insurgency there and had to use $16,500,000 as ransom to the
Benin General People's United Army of Liberation. Before he was able to
leave Benin he was yet again kidnapped; this time by the Benin Republic
Liberation Army of the People but in turn the van he was being transported
in was blown up by the Democratic Army for the Liberation of the Republican
People of Benin. It was quite the mess let me assure you.

While sitting in a cyber café in Brussels I was then contacted by John Doe, the elder brother to
the late Liberian President Samuel Doe (who was murdered by the then rebel
leader Charles Taylor, now Liberian President) who wanted to move
$18,500,000 (25% plus expenses) out of his country. I agreed to meet him
in Freetown, Sierra Leone since it was close to him and I had business there
to help move some diamonds out of the country. We were close to actually
consumating the deal when I was doubled crossed by the Sierra Leone diamond
merchants and I'm afraid that the late John Doe was caught in the Men's room of a
Kurdish restaurant during a bomb explosion set off by Iraqi agents thinking
I was a CIA
operative. I'm nothing more than an honest person trying to help launder
money for those less fortunate than myself; I am in no way a CIA operative.

The deal with Ekwueme Chiekwugo Ukwu fell apart as well. He had first
contacted me under the name of Dr. Oshoniwo Kogi, an official of
the Federal Government of Nigeria, looking to transfer $10,500,000 (20%
cut). Knowing the circumstances of your government I could understand why
he choose to use a pseudonym but previous legal entanglements with the
government of Libya blocked the transfer of funds. Over a month and a half
later he got in contact with me again, under the name of Dr. Edet Amama, yet another official
of the Nigerian Federal Government. I went to Lichtenstein to meet with him
but found out later that he was attempting to move much more than the
$10,500,000 he claimed to have by using several agents, one claiming to be
James T. Kirk from the United States but in reality was an ex-KGB agent now working
for the Chechnya separatist government. The last I heard Mr. Ukwu was still
in an Algerian prison waiting to be extradited (please do not ask how I know
such information; even if I were inclined to tell you, I would have to
silence you afterwards).

Your offer of $7,640,000 (net) is the best I've received yet, but I'm afraid
that with the recent events it is no longer financially viable for me to
continue with such endeavors. So it is with much regret that I have to turn
down your fine offer.

I do hope that you find another agent to work with, but beware of James T.
Kirk; he's a most unsavory character.

Considering that the bird hadn't thawed before brining and not discovering this until
afterwards, then some last minute thawing triage which threw the
timing of everything else off, the meal was quite successful. Which is to
say, the bird wasn't totally dry.

I decide to help AccordionGuy by helping to save his
Christmas by buying a book or two (or four—he had a good selection of
computer related books at about half of what I would pay new). I asked what
his preferred non-PayPal method of payment would be, and he said
“international money order.” Seems that Canada (since he lives in Canada)
is not part of the United States, yet, and any personal check I
write will take nearly a month to clear, which won't exactly help
AccordionGuy for Christmas. An “international money order” would clear
faster (days perhaps) and allow him access to the funds while there are
still shopping
days left.

Now, I've dealt with money orders before—an “international money order”
shouldn't be all that difficult, right? Just head to my bank and get one,
right?
It's not like my bank is a small, obscure bank that no one outside of west
Boca Raton have heard of—no, it's this behemouth of a bank
where you can't throw a bagel without
hitting a branch down here in South Florida (for the record, my checking
account has outlasted three (3) banks so far; each one getting consumed by a
larger entity).

So of course getting an “international money order” should be trivial.

“You want a what?” asked the teller, eyes glazing over in puzzlement.

“An internation money order,” I said. “I want to send money to
Canada.” I was met with a blank stare. “You know, the place where all the people
with ‘Bring me souvenirs’ on their license plates come from.”

“Oh! Well,” said the teller riffling through some stacks and pulling out
a small form, “we can handle a money order.”

“No, I want an international money order so it doesn't take a
month for the check to clear.”

“Let me ask my boss,” said the teller and left. Several minutes pass.
“I'm sorry, but we don't know anything about these international money
orders. Maybe you can get one at 7-11.”

Blink.

Blink.

“Okay, I'll try,” I said and left.

Spring suggested a
check cashing store down the street. She theorized that a sizable portion
of the domestic help in Boca Raton might send money back home south of the
border, so they might be able to deal with an “international money order.”

“A what?”

“An international money order,” I said. “I want to send money
to Canada.”

“The place where all those people want our souvenirs come from, right? I
didn't know that was international.”

Last attempt. Even though we've received a stern warning from them, the United States Postal Service may be my only
hope—they send stuff all over the world; they might have heard of
“international money orders!”

“Oh, yes,” said the United States Postal worker. “Where is the money
being sent to?”

Amazing! Such a thing as an “international money order”
does exist! It wasn't a Canuck playing a joke on us Yanks after
all! “Canada,” I said.

“Oh, those nice people that make toques.” A few minutes later I had my
“international money order.”

Obligatory Miscellaneous

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go
ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or
entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent
links to that entry only. The format for the links are
simple: Start with the base link for this site: http://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are
interested in, say 2000/08/01,
so that would make the final URL:

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's
intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the
page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in
using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If
you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that
important.

It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name,
symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a
protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its
owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.